Rackspace backtracks over toff-proof sign-up process

Royals, aristos excluded by double-barrel discrimination

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Rackspace has been forced into a hasty about-turn after it emerged that it was discriminating against aristocrats, power couples and other bigwigs with a sign-up and billing process that refused to recognise double-barrelled surnames.

The policy put it totally at odds with a modern Britain that adores Royalty, and prefers its democratically elected leaders to come from the better sort of families and to have been educated at the great public schools.

Your reporter discovered the posho-snubbing bug last Friday, when I found myself trying to sign up with the hosting service supplier to test their "cloud" solution for my website. I had an excellent online chat, found that there was a free month offer on, and was called by a very helpful guy from the Netherlands to discuss options.

Unfortunately, when I went to sign up online, Rackspace's form validation told me that my double-barrelled surname was unacceptable (only letters and numbers and digits allowed) and even trying to bypass that by fibbing about my name seemingly caused the following credit-card validation step to fail. Whoops!

So I was cast on to the (very upmarket) heap with the De'Aths and fforbes-Hamiltons and Saxe-Coburg Gothas.

When I pointed out this roadblock Rackspace was suitably contrite and offered to try to fix their billing system to allow in the hordes of upper-crust geeks screaming at the gates, and me.

Maybe they just didn't want to offend the aristos this week? Did they know that I'm the great-great-mumble-mumble-grandson of King William IV and thus some sort of distant cousin of the Queen (Windsor, formerly Saxe-Coburg Gotha) and David Call-me-Dave-Cameron? Have the happy couple to-be been waiting for their cloud account too?

Rackspace has promised me my free month trial in any case, so good on them, eh, what? ®